Gey-Free

On October 5 this year, in the Alsatian town of Klingersheim near the Swiss border, Amira walked into her 14-year-old daughter Dinah’s room and found her dead. According to her mother, Dinah committed suicide because she saw no other way out due to relentless bullying, ridicule, and insults from her peers—both at school and on social media. Dinah had once been a popular and sociable high school student, a good pupil and athlete, always surrounded by friends. “She wanted to become president of the republic,” her mother said. But when, at 13, she decided to confide in her peers about her sexual orientation, her life turned into hell.

To continue their torment even during afternoons and weekends, some of her classmates and former friends created a WhatsApp group where they posted insults about the “dirty lesbian” and “dirty mixed-race girl.” Dinah’s mother Amira was born in La Réunion, a French overseas department in the Indian Ocean. Dinah had already attempted suicide in March of this year, but the new school year and her enrollment in a new high school gave her some hope that her suffering might end. It was in vain. When she begged her tormentors on social media to leave her alone, they responded: “We hope you succeed next time.”

Dinah’s parents do not only blame her peers for her death but also the school administration, which, according to them, had been informed of the bullying but failed to act. Both the police and school authorities launched an investigation to determine whether there was a causal link between the hell Dinah endured and her decision to take her own life. The results of that investigation are not yet known. However, a study conducted nearly a decade ago at Mireil University in Toulouse showed that suicidal tendencies are significantly more common among young people attracted to the same sex or uncertain about their sexual identity—mainly due to the hostile, intolerant, and abusive reactions of their peers.

This tragic reality is not only illustrated by Dinah’s story but also by the suicides of 19-year-old transgender psychology student Doona, who threw herself under a train at the Montpellier railway station in September last year, and 17-year-old Avril, who took her life in Lille last December.

Dinah, Doona, and Avril all committed suicide in France—a country not usually seen as overtly homophobic, at least not at first glance. For several years now, the French Ministry of Education has issued guidelines to schools for preventing peer bullying and harassment, which include measures against homophobic verbal and physical violence. Recently, the French Parliament unanimously approved a draft law enabling criminal prosecution of so-called "conversion therapy" to “cure homosexuality.” If the victim of such “therapy” is a minor, the draft law provides for up to three years in prison.

Yet Dinah’s tragic case and the political rhetoric of likely presidential candidate Éric Zemmour—whose crusade in defense of the “white, heterosexual, Catholic Frenchman” enjoys strong support in public opinion polls—demonstrate that homophobia remains deeply rooted in French society. Hatred based on sexual orientation is not just a fringe pathology even in the “more liberal” part of Western Europe. A reluctance—or at least a lack of determination—to ensure equal rights and respect for human dignity remains present even in parts of the political mainstream.

This was evident in a recent secret vote in the Italian Senate, where a bill was blocked by a margin of 154 to 131 votes. The bill would have defined violence against LGBT persons, people with disabilities, and acts of misogyny as hate crimes. Members of far-right parties claimed the law would restrict free speech and promote homosexual propaganda in schools. Such arguments strongly resemble rhetoric found in parts of Eastern Europe, where political movements base their vision of a new Eastern conservatism on similar ideas.

Homophobia is one of the bludgeons used by far-right populism to demolish the European democratic model, which is based on human rights, pluralistic democracy, and the rule of law. American historian Timothy Snyder interprets the populist obsession with homosexuality as an attempt to justify authoritarian rule under the guise of protecting the nation’s purity from the supposed threat of decadent liberal democracy from the West.

The strategic advantage of polarizing society around sexual orientation is that—unlike arguments over social progress, economic performance, material well-being, or personal freedoms—it requires no facts. Stirring up prejudice and intolerance suffices.

The extent of intolerance at the institutional level is starkly illustrated by the fact that nearly a hundred Polish municipalities and regions declared themselves “LGBT-free zones.” Some have since reversed these declarations—but only out of fear of losing European funding. Notably, the term “LGBT-free” strongly resembles “Judenfrei”, the Nazi designation for areas “cleansed of Jews.” I won’t go so far as to draw further conclusions or call anyone a Nazi, but the terminological similarity is too striking to ignore.

The insidiousness of measures targeting the rights and dignity of LGBTI+ individuals in countries that officially remain committed to European human rights standards lies in their claimed justification: they do not attack homosexuals per se but the so-called “LGBT ideology.” According to this logic, LGBTI people are supposedly equal citizens with full rights—but the law prohibits anyone from explaining that this is the case, especially to children. Bizarre, but unfortunately effective.

To justify and conceal discrimination based on sexual orientation and identity, personal characteristics are reframed as deliberate choices of an unacceptable, perverse, and socially harmful ideological orientation. Some don’t even bother to pretend anymore; they openly incite against the “ideology” of human rights and other core values of civilization.

Dinah, according to her mother, committed suicide because she could no longer endure the abuse she suffered at school in a country where the fight against hatred and discrimination based on sexual orientation and identity is not only enshrined in law but, at least for now, enjoys broad political and societal consensus.

It is almost impossible to imagine the personal anguish and suffering experienced by young LGBTI people in countries where intolerance is politically weaponized, and where “homosexual propaganda in schools” is legally banned. The logic of hatred and intolerance, if taken to its extreme, paints a chilling projection of a possible future in which Éric Zemmour wins the French presidential election and implements parts of his ideological platform.

After Dinah’s death, hundreds gathered in the town of Mulhouse, including many children, to express outrage at the tragedy and demand protection of human rights and respect for the dignity of LGBTQ people. Under legislation already in place in some European countries, such an expression of opinion could be banned—and even criminally prosecuted.